Beto O'Rourke Is the Type of Politician Ted Cruz Always Wished He Could Be

A new Emerson College poll in Texas finds Beto O'Rourke trailing incumbent senator Ted Cruz by a single point, a gap that is well within the attendant 4.4-point margin of error. Other polls report similarly perilous leads for Cruz, whose unlikability is now testing the outer limits of his built-in partisan advantage. A whopping 21 percent of respondents surveyed by Emerson College report that they are still undecided, which means that the Democratic Party's efforts to turn one of America's reddest states blue will succeed or fail sometime in the next ten weeks.

The most revealing polling results come when voters are organized by age. Among respondents between 55 and 74 and respondents above 75, Cruz leads his opponent by 14 and 22 points, respectively. O'Rourke, however, has energized middle-aged constituents and, especially younger constituents, to a degree that Cruz never did: Voters in the 35-to-54 bracket favor the challenger by seven points, and in the 18-to-34 bracket, by 19. What we have in Texas right now is a battle between older people who quite like the way things are in this country, and the next two generations who have decided that their state deserves better than the career politician who represents them in Washington.

This probably isn't a moniker that Ted Cruz, the Tea Party darling who promised in 2012 that he'd be beholden to nothing but the Constitution and to no one but the long-dead men who wrote it, ever imagined would apply to him. Cruz's whole life has been a series of steps designed to accumulate as much political power as possible, and this thirst has always been his undoing: The closer he gets to achieving his goals, the more apparent it becomes that he's in it for himself. (See, for example, all of the things that happened in 2016.) Every time Ted Cruz looks in the mirror, he sees the conservative John F. Kennedy, or the right-wing Barack Obama. What he has never realized is that voters see another smarmy opportunist who is straining to cosplay better men and women than him.

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You can see this dynamic at work in the latest hot-button issue of great national importance that divides the candidates, which is, of course, NFL players kneeling during the pregame rendition of the national anthem in order to raise awareness of police brutality and racial injustice. At a recent town hall, an attendee expressed frustration with the protests, and asked—politely and respectfully—what O'Rourke thought of them.

The candidate's response, which has gone viral in a video that has appeared in your timeline 10,000 times in the past week, is just as polite and respectful. He begins by acknowledging the tremendous sacrifices that veterans have made for this country, and then runs through a litany of civil rights pioneers who suffered and died defending freedom, too. Heroism and patriotism are not the exclusive domain of the military, and the failure of politicians—a group in which he includes himself—to live up this history of activism by stopping the murders of unarmed black men deserves to be protested, he says, until politicians change. "I can think of nothing more American," he says, "than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights—anytime, anywhere, anyplace."

O'Rourke acknowledges that this is a question about which reasonable people can disagree. But it is an empathetic, thoughtful answer that explains why he believes that his position is right, without impugning the character of those who decide otherwise.

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Cruz spun this revealing moment into an attack ad. "Liberal Hollywood was thrilled," says a narrator, invoking one of his favorite bogeymen. "But do Texans feel the same way?" The ad then shows a clip of former Marine Tim Lee, who lost both legs in Vietnam, urging an audience to stand "for him" during the national anthem.

Lee is very plainly entitled to his opinion. So is everyone. What the incumbent's response elides, however, is that O'Rourke explicitly stated that he has no problem whatsoever with Lee's position—that he understands it, and respects it, and just happens to have drawn another conclusion. Ted Cruz is trying to portray what was a respectful debate as some outrageous declaration of war.

Cruz has grown fond lately of lamenting the bitter and divisive nature of modern politics, where every difference dissolves quickly into discord. But as polls tighten, he is the one exploiting the animus he professes to abhor, beating the Trumpian culture war drums and hoping that taking absolutist positions on nuanced issues will be enough to keep his job. This authenticity gap is why younger voters favor O'Rourke: It is okay for Americans to disagree with one another. But O'Rouke is saying so because he really believes it. Cruz, as always, is just parroting what he thinks people want to hear.

On the issues, the two men couldn't be further from one another. As politicians, however—as public figures, whom voters choose to represent them for reasons that go beyond their individual policy positions—the irony of this race is that, no matter who wins or loses in November, Beto O'Rourke has proven himself to be exactly the type of person that Ted Cruz always hoped he would become.

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